


Childish

by thatsrightdollface



Category: DC Animated Universe, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Other, Reunion, Strong Language, You Have Been Warned, because Gizmo, but not a very sticky-sweet reunion, experimenting on people is also a thing, this is more about friendship and the lack thereof than anything?, this takes place in Gotham!, time sssssssskip!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1856685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jinx clicked along in her plastic heels, hair heavy down her back and cotton candy eyes hidden behind dark, pointed glasses.  She looked like she thought she was a movie star, leggings sheer like shadow smeared over her skin and a proper handbag like proper ladies might have liked.  Her ankles didn’t wobble even a little bit, nowadays, not like when she was younger.  You could still see each of her ribs.  Well, you could have if she’d wanted you to, but now she wore a sleek black peacoat and a purple scarf that looked a bit too little-girl for this new self.<br/>She wore that piece, printed with goofy lollipop patterns, in hopes a token of the past would buy her favor with <i>him,</i> with her old friend tucked away here.  Of course, she knew she shouldn’t ever count on good luck.  </p><p>Jinx and Gizmo reunite after years of opposing shenanigans on their respective sides of the law.  Jinx has a proposition.  Gizmo has a bit of a grudge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childish

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it~ sorry it took so long to get another Teen Titans fic out. :) <3
> 
> Gizmo's "real" name is supposedly Mikron O'Jeneus.... But I decided to do something a little different, playing off of that. I thought it could be interesting for character development! You'll see.

Arkham’s halls howled, not only at night – it was like the asylum never slept. How could it? Its voice was the wind, sure, and the hum of machinery. It was patients both human and not-quite-anymore, cackling, murmuring, chanting, puking, wailing. It was the rotten old house itself, shifting in its grave. It was a moan, ecstatic and dying, all its people woven together. It was healing, and those who could never leave. 

Jinx didn’t think about all that, but she sort of knew it, anyway. Part of her found the Arkham House beautiful, even if it did make her think of darker days. The poor old asylum remodeled itself and cleared out some of its dank and blood-smeared places, hoping to make itself good again. It tried to run away from its sad, macabre self with shiny advertisements about medicine and a better society. It tried, but its gate still creaked and its windows still got icy before anywhere else in town. 

It was still _Arkham,_ for God’s sake. 

Jinx clicked along in her plastic heels, hair heavy down her back and cotton candy eyes hidden behind dark, pointed glasses. She looked like she thought she was a movie star, leggings sheer like shadow smeared over her skin and a proper handbag like proper ladies might have liked. Her ankles didn’t wobble even a little bit, nowadays, not like when she was younger. You could still see each of her ribs. Well, you could have if she’d _wanted_ you to, but now she wore a sleek black peacoat and a purple scarf that looked a bit too little-girl for this new self. 

She wore that little piece, printed with goofy lollipop patterns, in hopes a token of the past would buy her favor with _him,_ with her old friend tucked away here. Of course, she knew she shouldn’t ever count on good luck. 

Jinx hadn’t been here in a long time, and she’d never come uninvited or unchained. 

She showed her ID to the guards and they escorted her first through the brand-spanking-new lobby – see, this isn’t a dungeon we’re running here, yes, yes, this is a proper institution, a goddamned _hospital_ – and then through a few of the most respectable hallways. 

“Official business?” they asked her. “With the Justice League?” 

“The Teen Titans?” 

“Do you have to do a solo interrogation, or something?” 

“Or something,” Jinx smiled, and her lips were a smudge of oil. 

They wouldn’t have taken him to Arkham before he did _it,_ and Jinx didn’t much like thinking about how it must have been right before he did. He’d always had a sort of wild, overeager, over-aware look in his eyes – he’d always had grabby fingers and the sort of mouth that ran on and on while he only half heard himself. He was calculating something even while he told you to use a shit-stained crowbar to shove your ideas back up your butt. There were numbers and graphs behind his eyes all the time. Looking into his stupid sugar cereal. Telling Jinx her dress looked like something a hooker might wear, way before most kids knew what hookers were. 

He’d been alone. That’s how he’d done it. He’d been alone and there’d been no one to hold his wrist or punch his arm or tell him he was being a freaking idiot. That’s why he was here. Jinx wasn’t sorry, really, but she felt sick. Queasy. She’d been putting this visit off for a while. 

She powdered her voice with sugar and asked for Michael O’Reilly’s room. Mikron O’Jeneus, an alias chosen around age eight, when space age things always came with jump suits and going Roger that! into communicators. Jinx hadn’t known Gizmo’s birth name until they’d been enemies for years, until she’d lost all opportunity to try it out on him. It still didn’t feel like it really belonged to anyone. 

Gizmo shouldn’t have belonged here, either. Gotham, of all places. Jinx knew why these bustling guards only took her to see the uppermost levels of the hospital – the top bit, above the wet, fetid earth. There was a faint mildew smell everywhere you went in Gotham. Mildew and smoke, iron and peeling paint. Bad luck heaped on bad luck, years of rot and superstition. Grease and piss and sweat. This would’ve been an excellent place for her to work, if she’d still been in the old supervillain biz, but not Gizmo. He’d have wanted somewhere with mad tech and gleaming skyscrapers, somewhere with a social ladder to climb where you could rake in the cash without so much threat of the knife that slit your throat being all rusted and bent and crusty. 

Gizmo hadn’t done much business in Gotham. Maybe that’s why he was here – safer, maybe, where people didn’t know as much about him. 

Nobody batted an eyelash when Jinx asked to see Michael O’Reilly. They’d been teammates so long ago, and everybody knew she was squeaky clean now, a redemption arc to be proud of. Hadn’t she taken her own friends down for the betterment of the world? 

Some sucker even tried offering Jinx his hand to escort her out of the elevator, wearing a smirky little grin like he’d post about this later on Facebook. Perhaps she had a better reputation around here than she’d thought. Gotham _did_ have to deal with Batman, after all. 

“Thanks, sweetie,” Jinx said; she slipped the guard's keys off his belt in one fluid, easy motion, and tossed her hair back so he'd smell sugar cookie shampoo. “I can take it from here.” 

Downstairs, some guy got his shirt stuck in his pants zipper; his hands were slick and he cussed in that gritty, nasty voice he usually reserved for drivers that pissed him off and bums that touched his arm. He forgot he was on speakerphone with his family, for just that moment, and then it was too late. Someone else snapped her laptop shut and heard the screen crack like a bone. Someone else realized last minute that they’d left their car windows open, and when the rain came in everything would stink like the city. 

Jinx could feel her touch seeping into the plaster, clinging to the soul of this place like a new coat of paint. It must’ve been the nerves. 

She used to knock on Gizmo’s door back at home –she told herself it was just so he didn’t get pissy, but it was more than that. She told other people it was because you never really knew what the darn kid was working on, what sort of rotating magma claws or vomit-inducing gases or toxic Pokémon cards he’d hurl at you if you ticked him off. He’d never actually hurt her with any of that stuff, though. Mammoth, sure. Most of their other team members, sure. Jinx didn’t really think she needed to be afraid of Gizmo, though it would’ve been easier on him to freak her out. Maybe she’d just knocked because he liked it, or maybe it was because he’d strolled through the hallway wearing a gasmask pushed up on his head sometimes, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and a bath towel tossed over his shoulder. He wore sandals in the bathroom and tried to get Mammoth to do the same. 

“If I wanted these assholes’ foot sweat and toe boogers on my skin I’d just wear their freaking socks,” he’d said, completely forgetting the weird haze around his dorm room door and the toxic stains on his skin. He’d slip the gasmask back on before going to bed those days, and who wants to stroll unknowing into a room where you might have to arm yourself against the air? 

Jinx didn’t think about knocking at first, now, not until she’d already turned a couple of the keys in their locks. Knocking couldn’t really have meant anything – it’s not like Gizmo – Michael – could keep her out. It’s not like he could keep anyone out, anymore. His was a long grey hallway. Nothing stayed clean very long in Gotham, so grey was probably a safe color for everything. There were inspirational posters on the wall; sort of ironic considering the plaques by some of the patients’ rooms, identifying them as conniving criminal masterminds. Tourist attractions. 

There weren’t plaques like that around the asylum’s deepest levels, just like there probably weren’t clipboards and posters of kittens. 

Jinx should have come sooner, or perhaps she shouldn’t have come at all. She knocked, and he didn’t answer. She finished unlatching all those locks and called, “Hey there, dork – it’s me,” all sing-song and soft. Maybe it was the same voice as she’d used scooting Gizmo off the couch and away to bed when they were younger and he’d have listened to her. She pushed the door open. 

Of course Jinx had seen pictures of this stranger, grown-up Gizmo in the papers and in the Justice League’s database, but his hair was redder than she’d thought, sort of shaggy now that he wasn’t allowed near razors until he showed Improved Signs of Mental Stability. Knocking out a nurse and modifying the razor into a skeleton-rattling electric weapon tended to get a few privileges revoked. Gizmo wasn’t much taller than he’d been when she knew him, but he had a beard. Thanks, no-razor-privileges, for doing away with that majestic Fu Manchu/goatee combo he’d been sporting. 

Anyway. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed and scribbling away in one of those yellow graph paper notebooks. He didn’t look up when she came in, and there were no personal photos anywhere in the room. 

“No solicitors,” this man who had been Gizmo muttered. “And any shit-stained traitors who think sending me a get-well card now will win them favors can just cartwheel straight to hell.” 

“Still making poop jokes, are we?” 

“That wasn’t a joke.” Gizmo’s eyes flicked up from his work – not exasperated as he might’ve been, once, but dull. He didn’t really care. He didn’t seem surprised to see her – he was drawing some sort of diagram, and the extra metal veins he’d strung through his flesh glinted green and orange at his temples and wrists. His battle-pack, with the spider legs and wings and canons and whatever else had been cumbersome, in the end, and he’d taken all that technology and wired it into himself, into a steel spine outside his own, hooked to his brain, wired to his commands. Easier that way; only logical, too, to make toys that Cyborg couldn’t break without actually killing him. Wasn’t that how Cyborg had always taken him down in the old days? Smash the remote; rip off the spider legs; punt the poor little bastard to the stars. Gizmo controlled so much of his tech with his brain, nowadays, the way Cyborg did. They wouldn’t have been so different, really, except that Gizmo’s modifications were purely for power, and he could turn them off at will. He slept on his side now, Jinx guessed – that had actually been her first thought when headquarters showed her what they speculated about his designs. He slept on his side and used them to play Netflix in his head, but he hadn’t needed them. They didn’t keep him breathing, but they did shoot lasers. 

If they’d gotten Gizmo before the modifications, before they discovered all those poor saps he’d tested this shit out on before himself, he probably would’ve gone to Blackgate again, or somewhere in Jump City. Closer to home. Jinx would’ve been able to buy his release if she needed him; hell, he’d probably have flown the coup already himself. 

This wasn’t going to be anything like that simple, not since the Joker, not since Arkham’s remodeling, but it would be worth it. 

What had Jinx been expecting? Not a warm welcome, but perhaps at least some emotion, some quiver in his hands, his voice. Some sweat on his brow; some memories. They’d been like family once. She knew how he’d looked at her through that ice, being carted away so long ago, after she’d turned good. Like “good” was a switch she’d just flipped in her head. He’d looked at her like he wanted it to be a joke or he wanted her dead. 

“Would it help if I said I’d missed your charisma and gentle spirit?” Jinx drawled. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her; her footsteps were too loud as she clopped over to sit at the foot of his bed. The hand she tried to set on the back headstand got nice and zapped – Gizmo snickered, but just a little bit. It wasn’t a serious burn. Perhaps then he’d have laughed. Jinx muttered – “Shit. Shoot.” 

“Wouldn’t help,” Gizmo said. 

“Would it help if I said I’d missed you?” 

“Get bent.” There had been little screens over Gizmo’s eyes in the arrest photos. He was looking right at the camera, and far away as well. Jinx had studied them as soon as they came in, mostly to see if he’d been seriously messed up or not. She did the same for the other HIVE members – it made her new teammates think she was sensitive, so it probably wasn’t so bad. Now he looked at his hands, and Jinx sat on his window seat. 

“I have an offer for you,” Jinx said. She sniffed and kicked at the wall; it scuffed her pretty shoes, but then of course it would. This wasn’t even a proper window, anyway – it had been sealed up with concrete a long time back, though you could still see the window’s edges, where daylight might have peeked in until the very last second. Maybe Gizmo would’ve gotten a good view of the murky water, this swill that the people of Gotham couldn’t even sail little toy ships on or anything. He liked rooms with nice views more than he’d ever wanted to let on. He’d stapled a picture of a wide blue sky to his basement wall in their lair and pretended like he didn’t notice it hanging there, didn’t give a damn about the real thing. He’d have blown it up, smogged it up, whatever it took for a little power, and don’t you snotfaced losers forget it. 

“You missed me,” Gizmo said, “Remember your cute little lie, fuckface.” 

“It’s an offer you’ll _like._ ” Jinx crossed her legs in the way she knew made certain members of her new entourage glance down or snicker or watch her a little more closely. Gizmo erased a few calculations at the edge of his drawing and made a point of looking away. It was awfully warm in her coat – Jinx thought about slipping it off, but she didn’t really want to stay long. 

“I told you: no favors,” Gizmo said. 

Jinx had been working on making her voice a little more grown up, but the façade was slipping fast. So much for practicing coy head-tilts in the mirror. “Alright, fine, be snide, but how were you planning to get out of Arkham?” 

“Nice shades. Very ‘Wonder Woman’s bitch’ of you.” 

“Gizmo.” 

Here Gizmo looked up, and there was a slight, slight hint of a smile, that manic, uncomfortable little sneer he used to wear. Or something kind of like it. The logical evolution of that grin. His voice was about the same as it had been way back then – deeper, sure, but still kind of nasally, grumbling or taunting. “They’re calling me Mr. O’Reilly now.” 

Jinx just couldn’t, and he probably _knew_ she couldn’t. She’d go with “Mike” – a kind of unsteady compromise. “So this is it, then, Mike? You’re just going to bow out and live here forever?” 

“You wouldn’t give a crap if you didn’t need something from me. What’re we building today? Am I gonna shit all over logic and make you another level four containment field in ten minutes? Is that how this is?” 

“You were a very helpful team member.” 

“You left.” Gizmo didn’t even bat an eye. He’d probably imagined himself saying that to her for years. 

And here was the response she’d come up with, carefully polished for just the right inflection, kind of sweet, kind of sad, kind of sorry – but not sorry enough that she’d ever actually apologize. “I didn’t leave because of you.” 

“You didn’t ask any of us to come with you, either.” 

“Would you have come? You grew up in the HIVE – it was pretty much all you’d ever known. You were… How old were you when you came to us for junior academy? Four? Older than me, and even _I_ believed I couldn’t be anything else.” 

Gizmo echoed back, “Even you.’ That’s cute. It doesn’t matter now, does it?” He paused and then muttered, “Pitsniffer,” as if reflecting back on those old days. An insult from the time before he’d learned he could get a little more respect by throwing around shits and damns and f-bombs absolutely everywhere. 

“It might be our lucky day,” Jinx offered. Gizmo snorted – enough with the luck jokes, seriously –but she pressed on anyway. “The Justice League has chosen me for a solo mission – I’m young, I know, but they think this will be a good step for me. A way to prove my quality to the people. And to myself.” 

Jinx was essentially quoting what Superman had told her. It was the first time he’d spoken to her, just her, and his eyes were like endless stretches of empty sky. It had felt important when he said that, but here it just felt sort of self-serving and lame. Maybe it was Gizmo’s raised eyebrow. Maybe it was Gotham’s stink, or the stray rattling scream from a few rooms over, where they were keeping someone called Joshua Park, or Plague Rat. A wanna-be supervillain who had infected himself with a highly mutated form of the bubonic plague, hoping to change himself beyond humanity. It had worked. Things like that often worked out for Gotham’s children, but rarely in their favor. Jinx scratched at her neck, half expecting to find boils there, screaming at her touch. She should leave soon before she got mad and her gift made the disease airborne or something. 

Gizmo finally deigned to answer her –“So you got a fucking gold star on your report card. We’re all so proud of you.” 

“Mike, they want me to infiltrate a supervillain gang. Because of my backstory – my roots, and… I’ve done it before... ” 

“Careful, or you’re gonna be writing your own comic books.” Gizmo didn’t mention how eager he’d been to have her back, in the long-ago days, when it looked like she was joining up with the HIVE Five again. He had told her he wasn’t quite willing to take on Aquaman and an army of sea monsters to get her a box of Lucky Charms, but he’d go swipe one from Wal-Mart if it'd keep her from ditching them all like some two-faced loser. He had told her he’d known she wasn’t a fickle coward wannabe Wonder Woman who'd leave them all in the dust. 

Jinx wondered if she should’ve worn her hair in pigtails, like back when she’d wanted to be Harley Quinn. Like when Gizmo'd trusted her. 

“They have some people getting my supplies ready. I don’t trust their tech – they know what they’re doing, I’m sure, but it’s not like they’ve worked with Batman or anything. Who knows how long it’d take them to build a level four containment field… ” Appeal to his vanity, Jinx thought – maybe he’ll assume I’m not telling the truth. “I don’t know anyone helping me out with this. I guess I’m trying to say I don’t trust the people, either.” 

“And you think they trust you? No one does. Tough titties.” 

“Wonder Woman said – the Wonder Woman, _Diana_ –suggested we could rehabilitate you. It’s the perfect mission, too. You ganging up with me to infiltrate the bad guys, and they’ll all think I was drawn back to my life of crime… We’re good together, Gizmo. Mike.” Jinx realized she was overexcited; she noticed what that might sound like a second too late. Who was she talking to? A kid who kicked his greasy boots up on the couch to look cool, resigning himself to smudging the cushions because he couldn’t quite reach the table? A dangerous man who had cut people open to experiment with highly unethical supervillain tech? She added, “Good teammates. A long time ago.” 

Gizmo let his notebook fall off his lap; he leaned his cheek into his hand and hissed laughter through his teeth. Not a lot, but it was familiar. “The fucking Justice League cares about ‘rehabilitating’ me?” 

“Even Cyborg didn’t complain too much.” 

“Then he should’ve just tried ‘rehabilitating’ me when I was so excited about getting one of their piece of shit communicators. Seriously. He probably doesn’t even remember.” Gizmo was talking about that time he and a lot of other heroes – he stressed that, telling the story, with a derisive little laugh – had been gathered up by the Master of Games and made to beat each other up until he sucked up all their powers. Obviously Gizmo had made it home. Jinx had left him two wheedling voicemails and one scared one. 

“If you have my back, I’ll have yours – that’s what Kid Flash taught me. You’re in jail, Gizmo, and for good reason. You’ve done some pretty…” Jinx wasn’t supposed to use this word in public, but she thought it might reach Gizmo, like a crude movie speaking to his level of humor, “Some pretty fucked up stuff.” 

“That on my arrest report?” 

“Essentially. I saw your test subjects.” 

“Oh, boo-hoo.” 

“Please,” Jinx climbed off the window seat and crouched by Gizmo’s bed. She hadn’t imagined herself doing something like that; it looked like she was kneeling down to pray. She reached out one French manicured hand and squeezed Gizmo’s arm – it would’ve been weird to ruffle his hair, though sort of swatting or patting his shaved head was always her go-to show of affection in the olden days. His arms were bony, his chin soft. Probably drank too much coffee and didn’t eat any vegetables. 

The first time Jinx had said “please” to Gizmo was when she’d forgotten about the test in Advanced Criminal Persuasion and he’d let her cheat off him – they’d hardly known each other. He just didn’t look like the kind of kid who followed anybody’s rules. He’d followed hers, though, for too long. The last time she’d said please, it was for him to leave her alone, and he’d said, “Fuck you.” It was the first time she’d heard that word from his mouth – snot, crud, puke, barf. 

And then now, when she didn’t want to say she liked the idea of going into battle with him again, this time with honor, this time with a future, this time with plans and Superman nodding solemnly in the background like in a freaking movie. Wind tossing her hair. A sidekick who’d saved her ass before and who cared if she got fried, who would make fun of everyone else, muttering to her and her alone, there in the crowded world. Inside jokes coming back and making her feel human, a little less plastic, a little less defined by first impressions. This kid had seen her puke and heard her screech and laugh until she cried. This kid wasn’t a kid anymore, and neither was she, and would they even have been able to be friends if they'd met up for the first time, now? 

Gizmo smiled. He said, “About time you asked me for something nicely.” 

The wind outside Arkham House was pins and needles of rain, murky and hurting the way only Gotham’s rain could be. The pavement was slick and sticky, both, and deep in the guts of Arkham there was someone crying. There were words carved on the ground in circles as wide and hopeless as the earth, and there was a mirror someone was trying to break through with her fingers. It was going to work. There was a little clown girl who let herself get tossed out the window like a candy wrapper when she could have beaten Mr. J to the moon and back, with her diamond quick mind and her windup doll muscles. There was a man trying to peel scales out of his skin when there was only blood, just icky, icky blood as far deep down as he could get, as deep deep down as there was deep down to claw to grasp to grip to go deep deep down. 

Gizmo lifted his pen and tapped the eraser to Jinx’s neck; she felt the poison smudge her skin, and then she didn’t feel anything at all. She crumpled, and hair clung to her lip gloss; her arm draped over Gizmo’s leg, and he carefully moved it off. She was going to be fine. 

Mechanical arms squirmed out from Gizmo’s back, unfolding, clicking out and whirring nice and soft. His proper ones had been restrained, but these were new, built of scraps, pieced together very slowly for an occasion just like this. A bit of a missing vacuum cleaner; a bit of a dismantled stove that had magically stopped working. It was, after all, his specialty. 

Gizmo hopped out of bed with a merry little swing in his step, clapping his hands once, quite loud, and then rubbing them together. Jinx would’ve liked to see his smile, now, because he was looking at her like they were almost friends. If she saw, it was through a lovely little haze, and she wouldn’t remember later. Gizmo’s mechanical arms were gentle, gripping her and tucking her into his hospital bed. He even pulled the sheets up to her waist. The alarm was already sounding, but he had plenty of time. 

Jinx would wake up propped on a guard’s arm, smelling his sour breath mints voice and holding a piece of yellow graph paper, with _Bring me one of those cruddy communicators, and then we’ll talk,_ written in that too-neat handwriting of his, like it was printed by a computer. Gizmo was gone, of course. It’s like he’d planned this, somehow. 

The papers printed a lot of nonsense about Arkham’s remodeling, about how staff and doctors and madmen alike should have known the old house spat evil back into the world like it didn’t enjoy the taste. Jinx couldn’t finish any of the articles. But that was later. For now, she walked out in Gotham’s rain without an umbrella, and decided the way it stung her cheeks, pollution and dark and cold and sharp, was better than she’d thought it would be. She was still a little dizzy, and she’d tucked Gizmo’s notebook into her jacket when none of the guards would notice her. They wanted to interrogate her. They wanted to escort her away. Jinx looked at them like they were something ground up on the bottom of her shoe that was still managing to wriggle a little bit. 

She would explain today to Wonder Woman somehow, but for the first time in quite a while that idea felt small, to Jinx, like the shining ladder into the sky she’d been clawing at as long as she could remember was becoming hard to see in Gotham’s sky. 

Of course she was going to follow him, she told herself, but not because she’d fail her mission without him, not because she ever imagined him making fun of Superman’s hair in an obnoxious little whine to make her feel safe. 

That would’ve been so childish.


End file.
